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October 16, 2020For most of my life, I have been troubled by the suggestibility and behavior of crowds. I remember how disturbing I found the reaction of fellow students at Dartmouth College years ago to a performance by Sly and the Family Stone.
They were all standing on their chairs and moving in unison to the music. I had to slip outside. Maybe because my mother and her family were stateless persons in France during World War II and, like the Jews, would have been sent to death camps had they not been able to flee from the Nazis, I found myself thinking of masses of people simultaneously giving Nazi salutes. I am not crazy about sports events or political rallies for the same reason. I feel the same way about some religious events, especially the kind in stadiums or large halls.
I have many friends who are charismatic Christians, many of them Catholic, and have been blessed by teaching and graces they have imparted. At the same time, I have often been put off by what seems to be a high level of suggestibility and gullibility in some charismatic settings. Even though I believe fully in supernatural miracles and signs and wonders being operational today, I don't think God needs us to be whipped up into an emotional frenzy in order for Him to work. In fact, the less "fizz" the better. Otherwise, what seems to be a miracle is likely only a hypnotized state that will not last, or requires re-creating similar emotional experiences to renew the trance state.
Take, for example, when at a meeting led by a charismatic Christian speaker, he or she (though it's usually a he in my experience) says, "Turn to the person next to you and tell them God is good!" Or "Tell them 'I expect a miracle today'" and everyone turns to the person next to them and says whatever they are told to say. I always resist this, because it is hypnotic suggestion at work and it bothers me.
You find this also with motivational speakers who advise you how to become millionaires by becoming a motivational speaker to help people become millionaires. If you get people to live in a fantasy world, to dream of riches or love, you can also hypnotize them.
Whenever one is emotionally excited, daydreaming about things positive or negative, one is easy to hypnotize. Being at a rock concert, an exciting religious event with pounding music, or a political rally isn't the only way one becomes suggestible. Watching television news that encourages you to respond with outrage, scorn, or irritation also makes you suggestible. So does doom-scrolling on social media for those tweets and articles that engender a state of "righteous indignation," a sense of moral superiority or resentment. Why was Hitler so successful? He tapped into the resentment of the German people. He whipped it up.
Americans are in the midst of a contentious federal election that has seen unprecedented levels of vitriol, descriptions of reality by political operatives that seem to describe parallel universes and what amounts to highly sophisticated disinformation campaigns. Many of us having relatives and friends for whom politics is such a fraught topic it's best to avoid discussing it.
What does this have to do with the mission of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society---to promote the Anglican tradition in the Catholic Church in order to preach the Gospel, make disciples and glorify God?
Elements of our patrimony can help us resist this onslaught designed to confuse, destabilize and maniputate us. Ultimately, it is faith in Jesus Christ that provides us with the only true foundation. Scripture provides is with many exhortations to resist the world, the flesh and the devil and we need to pay heed.
Cultivating our faith in Christ through praying Mattins and Evensong, prayer that steeps us in Scripture, opens us to receive and maintain the peace of Christ. That supernatural peace the world cannot give is the best way to resist hypnotic suggestion. Keeping Jesus Christ as our way, truth and life makes us able to resist being our own judge and falling prey to resentment and moral superiority or fear so we do not fall for disinformation and brainwashing. Why do you think it is that totalitarian regimes get rid of the Bible and persecute religious communities? Because they are not as susceptible to mind control.
The COVID-19 response by governments and mainstream media has engendered lots of fear and fear makes us suggestible. Pray the offices and resist fear and cleave to the perfect love that casts out fear. Make every effort you can to avail yourselves of the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist.
The offices have become more important than ever in my daily prayer life, as well as the Rosary. The Rosary, when including Scripture and a meditation on the mysteries from Christ's incarnation to the crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven, is, as a friend put it once, a "spiritual washing machine" that replaces the programming of the world with the truths of heaven.
Prayer will help you live by the Spirit and display the fruits of the Spirit in your life---love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, longsuffering, self-control. It will help you to rise above partisanship and discern rather than judge.
If you find watching the news or going on social media is upsetting you, please stop, pick up your Bible, your prayer books and your beads and press in to Jesus Christ until He grants you His peace.
